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HMS ''Vanguard'' was a British fast battleship built during World War II and commissioned after the war. She was the only ship of her class and was the biggest, fastest and last of the Royal Navy's battleships,〔McCart, pp. 1, 10〕 and the final battleship to be launched in the world. Work on the ship's design commenced before the war because the Royal Navy anticipated being outnumbered by the combined German and Japanese battleships in the early 1940s. The British had enough guns and turrets in storage to allow one ship of a modified design to be completed faster than the ships of that class that had already been laid down. Work on ''Vanguard'' was started and stopped several times during the war and even after construction had begun, her design was revised several times to reflect war experience. These stoppages and changes prevented her from being completed during the war. ''Vanguard''s first task after completing her sea trial at the end of 1946 was, early the next year, to convey King George VI and his family on the first Royal Tour of South Africa by a reigning monarch.〔McCart, p. 42〕 While refitting after her return, she was selected for another Royal Tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1948. This was cancelled, however, by King George's declining health, and ''Vanguard'' briefly became flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet in early 1949. After her return home in mid-1949, she became flagship of the Home Fleet Training Squadron. Throughout her career, the battleship usually served as the flagship of any unit to which she was assigned. During the early 1950s, ''Vanguard'' was involved in a number of training exercises with NATO forces. In 1953 she participated in Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Review. While she was refitting in 1955, the Admiralty announced that the ship was going to be put into reserve upon completion of the work. ''Vanguard'' was sold for scrap and was broken up beginning in 1960. ==Design and description== By early 1939 it was clear that the first two s could not be delivered before 1943 at the earliest and that further battleship construction would be necessary to match the German and Japanese battleships already under construction. The main constraint on the construction of any new battleships was the limited available capacity and the time required to build large-calibre guns and their gun turrets. Using four existing twin mountings offered the possibility of bypassing this bottleneck and allowed the construction of a single fast battleship more quickly than building more ''Lion''-class ships. The turrets were originally built for the battlecruisers and during World War I and were removed during the conversions of these ships to aircraft carriers in the 1920s. To save time, the ''Lion'' design was modified to accommodate the four turrets and preliminary design work began in July 1939. The square or transom stern was retained as it was estimated to improve speed at full power by . This made ''Vanguard'' the only British battleship built with a transom stern as the ''Lion''s were never finished.〔Garzke and Dulin, pp. 274, 281–83, 298–99〕〔Raven and Roberts, p. 321〕 Design work was suspended on 11 September after the start of World War II, but resumed in February 1940 after the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, expressed an interest in the ship. The design was modified to increase protection against shell splinters on the unprotected sides of the ship's hull, the armour of the secondary armament was increased to resist semi-armour-piercing bombs and the splinter belt's thickness fore and aft of the main armour belt was reduced by in compensation. A small conning tower was added aft and four Unrotated Projectile mounts were added to supplement the six octuple-barrel 2-pounder anti-aircraft mounts already planned.〔Raven and Roberts, pp. 321–22〕 More pressing commitments forced the preliminary design work to be suspended again in June and, when it resumed in October, the design was modified again in light of recent war experience. Greater fuel capacity was added and the armour protection improved, but these changes deepened the design's draught so that it exceeded the limit of the Suez Canal. The thickness of the main belt was reduced by to save weight, but the primary method chosen to reduce the draught was to increase the beam by . This exceeded the width of the docks at Rosyth and Plymouth, which severely limited the number of docks that could handle the ship, but these changes were approved by the Board of Admiralty on 17 April 1941. The ship had already been ordered on 14 March〔Raven and Roberts, p. 322〕 under the 1940 Emergency War Programme,〔Parkes, p. 687〕 although the drawings were not turned over to John Brown & Company until ten days later.〔 ''Vanguard''s design was revised again, while the ship was under construction in 1942, to reflect lessons learned from the loss of the battleship and operations with the other battleships. The space between the inboard and outboard propeller shafts was increased from to prevent a single torpedo from wrecking both shafts and watertight access trunks were added to all spaces below the deep waterline to prevent progressive flooding through open watertight doors and hatches as happened to ''Prince of Wales''. This change and the relocation of some of the ammunition handling rooms from the lower deck to the middle deck seriously delayed the ship's completion. The design requirement that the guns of 'A' turret be capable of firing straight ahead at 0° of elevation was sacrificed to allow her freeboard forward to be increased and her bow was reshaped to make it less prone to shipping water and throwing sea spray in head seas. The ship's fuel supply was increased from to to prevent the fuel shortage problems suffered by and during their pursuit of the . The Unrotated Projectile mounts were deleted from the design and the light anti-aircraft armament was increased to a total of 76 two-pounders in one quadruple and nine octuple mounts and 24 Oerlikon 20 mm cannon were also added in 12 twin mounts. Space for these was made available by removing the two floatplanes, the catapult, and their associated facilities.〔Garzke and Dulin, pp. 285, 291–92〕〔 A proposal was made in 1942 to convert ''Vanguard'' to an aircraft carrier and the Director of Naval Construction said that doing so along the lines of the would present no major difficulties, but would require six months to redesign the ship. The proposal was formally rejected on 17 July.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HMS Vanguard (23)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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